Because he was tired of hauling ass every day, tired of sleeping in shitty motel rooms, tired of running from one dead end to another.
It was time to find that traitor asshole. “And if this ain’t for real, we’re gonna have to pay some friendly visits.”
There was no reaction from Jam, who took everything in stride. A perfect right-hand man. They were close; he could feel it. They just needed to tie up this loose end, and then he could move on running this club as it was meant to be run. Like a goddamned efficient business.
He popped a couple of antacids and burped again. Fuck, what he wouldn’t do for a home-cooked meal, though. The injustice of having to suffer through another greasy spoon was one more thing he heaped onto the back of that Navarro fuck.
He itched to get his hands on him. Him and everything he cared about, because goddamn, he couldn’t wait to see that cocksucker suffer.
OceanofPDF.com
18
It was easy to pretend that everything was fine with George on his side. She spread Vaseline over his back before leaving for work, and he sank into the experience, soaked up the tenderness, lost himself in the novelty of being… What? Loved?
According to her, his body was crusting over right on schedule. First blisters, she’d said, then scabs. His fingers weren’t doing quite as well, since he spent so much time working, moving them, washing his hands.
He didn’t care about the scars, he realized. It was the ink that bothered him the most—like a poison deep inside. He just wanted it out.
Clay worked on the house, telling himself he was paying her back, giving him an excuse to stick around, but it felt more like staking some kind of visible claim on her.
After a good few hours, the clapboard was coming along nicely, and he decided to head into town, get some clean clothes, and stock up on a few things he’d need the next day. It almost seemed normal when Sheriff Mullen caught sight of him coming out of the hardware store and called him over to his cruiser. He mentioned how much the kids had loved having him teach class the weekend before and told him he’d be needing him for the next few weeks. It felt natural to let himself get roped into it. And somehow, as he made his way across the street to the supermarket for a six-pack of beer and a bottle of wine, nodding to one of the coffee shop kids and helping an old lady unwind her leash from around one of the trees on Main Street, Blackwood felt a little bit like home.
But it wasn’t until he parked in front of George’s house, walked up the steps, and saw her working away in the kitchen, saw her expression when she caught sight of him through the glass, that Clay realized he was dangerously close to wanting this life—for real.
* * *
Again, Clay held George after dinner in a slow, candlelit dance. Then they washed the dishes before heading upstairs for a cooling shower and finally her bed, where his body enveloped hers and his lips trailed hot and hungry across her skin.
The room was dark, the only light streaming in from the hall. He was intimidating above her, his beauty all the greater for being slightly off, ragged with skin that had seen better days, hair starting to grow out from that short, almost military cut he’d sported when he arrived.
George let her eyes rove across the landscape of his skin—a map of his past. From his crushingly lovely face to where his feet hung off the foot of her bed. If only she understood what he’d been through, then maybe she could help him, maybe she could make him forget.
“What does this mean?” she asked, letting her fingers ghost over the face on his shoulder.
“It’s an Inca death mask. From Peru. Like my father. Me and my sister.”
George stilled.
“Why do you have that on your body?”
“For the same reason I have all the others.”
She raised her brows but didn’t ask, waiting him out instead.
“The other side’s the Gosforth Cross, and inside, it’s Víðarr slaying Fenrir, taking vengeance for his father’s death.”
“And this one?” George asked, touching the skull but fairly sure of the answer now.
“Santa Muerte. Safe delivery in the afterlife.”
“For Carly.” She leaned back to take in his body in its entirety. “Every single drop of ink is for her, isn’t it?”
Another slide of her eyes stopped halfway up, on the patchy, red burn scar on his side, the melted swirl of skin and ink. With some fractional ablative laser resurfacing, she could help him. Laser scar therapy could make it—
No. He wouldn’t want that, would he? This man would want to keep it. To remember.
“But the worst is this,” she said, letting her fingers linger. When he didn’t answer immediately, she realized he couldn’t possibly feel with that level of damage. She remembered the story he’d told her and winced. “You did this one.”
